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WASHINGTON – The historic $38 billion in budget cuts resulting from at-times hostile bargaining between Congress and the Obama White House were accomplished in large part by pruning money left over from previous years, using accounting sleight of hand and going after programs President Barack Obama had targeted anyway. Such moves permitted Obama to save favorite programs — Pell grants for poor college students, health research and "Race to the Top" aid for public schools, among others — from Republican knives, according to new details of the legislation released Tuesday morning. And big holes in foreign aid and Environmental Protection...

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Friday night’s last-minute deal to head off a government shutdown serves as a preview of two looming battles that will test the mettle of congressional Republicans, Democrats and President Barack Obama: whether to raise the U.S. debt limit, and enacting a budget for the next fiscal year. The U.S. government will hit its $14.29 trillion debt ceiling no later than May 16, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said earlier this week. Lawmakers including Sen. Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, and Sen. Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, say they won’t vote to raise it without accompanying plans to...

President Barack Obama will lay out his plan for reducing the nation's deficit Wednesday, belatedly entering a fight over the nation's long-term financial future. But in addition to suggesting cuts—the current focus of debate—the White House looks set to aim its firepower on a more divisive topic: taxes. In a speech Wednesday, Mr. Obama will propose cuts to entitlement programs, including Medicare and Medicaid, and changes to Social Security, a discussion he has largely left to Democrats and Republicans in Congress. He also will call for tax increases for people making over $250,000 a year, a proposal contained in his...

I know, I know. You’re not feeling that chipper over the last-minute aversion of a government shutdown. Perceived “caves” on key defunding issues like Planned Parenthood, NPR, and the budget in general have a lot of us feeling a bit down, although there may be room for some guarded optimism – my colleague Joseph Klein lays out the case here. And although all right-thinking people are relieved that the Left will not hold our soldiers hostage during a government shutdown, many of us think that shutting down so-called nonessential federal functions is EXACTLY what we need to do long term....

Budget Deal Nets DC Abortion Funding Ban, Planned Parenthood Vote Washington DC -- Senate Democrats caved on the issue of abortion late Friday night despite facing enormous pressure from pro-abortion groups to hold the line on taxpayer funding of abortion and Planned Parenthood funding. http://www.lifenews.com/2011/04/08/budget-deal-nets-dc-abortion-funding-ban-planned-parenthood-vote/

Here’s the unvarnished pitch House Speaker John Boehner would love to make to his conservative critics if he could just let it fly: “You are winning, and winning decisively. So stop your whining.”And here’s the unvarnished truth about that pitch: Boehner would be spot on.The winners and losers of this weekend’s 11th-hour budget deal may be in dispute. But the broader trajectory of politics, stretching back to the spring of 2009, is not. The Republican — and, yes, the tea party — agenda is not only ascendant, it’s driving the debate over reshaping government at every level.Jubilant top Republicans...

Bruce McQuain and others have made good points about the outcome of the budget battle – which actually ended up being a maneuver game, with a little fire traded but no real battle in the end.Here’s my take, for what it’s worth.First, the outcome of the last 24 hours is most important for what it’s not: a full-frontal cave-in by Republicans to business as usual. The numbers are less significant than the political postures in this regard. In the end, the Democrats were prepared to offer more cuts rather than go to a shutdown.That means they were not as confident...

Leaders of the small-government, tea-party movement are generally giving House Speaker John Boehner high marks for his leadership in the spending showdown, even though the agreement eventually reached Friday night fell short of the cuts the tea party once demanded. The relationship between the Republican leadership and these activists is one of the most important determinants of how this Congress will manage the fiscal fights to come. Tea-party backers have been leery of Mr. Boehner for months, questioning his zeal and driving him toward a tougher line on spending. As negotiations inched close to a deal late Friday, much of...

The $38.5 billion deal brokered between Republicans and President Barack Obama on Friday night may have resolved the immediate threat of a government shutdown. But it didn’t take long for many liberal Democrats to begin to realize that there might be not much cause for celebration. Princeton University professor Paul Krugman noted that by agreeing to this level of budget cuts, Obama had accepted the premise that the economy has recovered enough to withstand the withdrawal of federal spending. Despite the fragile economic recovery, the economy is still not strong enough, Krugman argued. “It’s worth noting that this follows just...

April 9, 2011What Challenges Will Congress Face Next? Panel on budget battle

Latest PoliticsWho Won the Shutdown Showdown? Apr 9, 2011- 6:21 - Both sides claiming victory in budget battle

One week ago, John Boehner was dead meat. Facing a rebellion among his freshman members and with a government shutdown looming, Washington was preparing a professional obituary for the speaker of the House. If he agreed to any compromise on the plan to fund the government for the remainder of the federal fiscal year, Boehner would lose the confidence of his caucus and be a lame duck. If he dug in and joined the fiscal hard-liners in shutting down the government, Boehner would lose his ability to negotiate with Democrats in future fights. His options were to either lose face...

DEVELOPING: Congressional leaders, with barely an hour to go before a federal government, announced late Friday night they had reached a deal to fund the government through the end of the fiscal year. House Speaker John Boehner, speaking briefly to reporters after talks had concluded, said the plan was to pass one last short-term spending resolution Friday night to buy lawmakers the time needed to prepare and pass the final budget bill.

They gathered in HC-5 all week talking — sometimes complaining loudly — about where the party was headed in the budget crisis. Many said House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) didn’t share enough information. Others were peeved he wasn’t pushing for deep enough cuts. Some were ready for a government shutdown. And on Friday night, Boehner himself was unsure what would happen. Halfway through a closed-door meeting of House Republicans, an aide approached Boehner, slipped him a piece a paper, which he read and quickly pocketed.He then stepped to the podium, and announced what everyone had been waiting for. “We have...

Congressional negotiators struck a last-minute deal to fund the government for the rest of the fiscal year, congressional leaders and the White House said late Friday, averting a threatened shutdown. The House and Senate are expected to approve a seven-day stopgap measure to keep the government running until the final details of the agreement can be worked out. Talks continued deep into the evening until, finally, House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) met with his caucus to outline the details of the proposed compromise, one in which Republicans succeeded in securing nearly $38 billion in cuts from current spending levels....

WASHINGTON – Perilously close to a government shutdown, President Barack Obama and congressional leaders forged agreement late Friday night on a deal to cut more than $37 billion in federal spending and avert the first closure in 15 years. Obama hailed the deal as "the biggest annual spending cut in history," and House Speaker John Boehner said that over the next decade it would cut government spending by $500 billion. "This is historic, what we've done," said the third man in the talks, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

Calls to de-fund and efforts to defend Planned Parenthood have reached a fever pitch in light of the potential shutdown on Capitol Hill, with Democrats pointing to Republicans’ unwillingness to drop Planned Parenthood cuts as the reason for an imminent government shutdown. “Republicans want to shut down our nation’s government because they want to make it harder for women to get the health services they need,” Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said on the floor Friday. “This is indefensible and everyone should be outraged — men and women should be outraged.” Both sides have gone to the mat over...

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — A government shutdown would lead to homeless wandering the streets, a national unemployment problem, a vicious power grab by Wall Street’s elite, and a rush by Americans to hoard precious assets such as gold and silver. So what else is new? By those measures, the government’s been closed for months. The gridlock in Washington is manifesting itself in the worst way possible this week, with both sides dug in and President Obama warning of dire consequences if the government grinds to a halt this weekend — from the furloughs of 800,000 federal employees to the freezing...

Republicans have always hated Medicare, but most Americans have always loved it. Now, led by Rep. Paul Ryan, the Republicans are trying to kill it once and for all. Only among Beltway elites is it considered courageous to deny ill and infirm seniors the health care they deserve -- while giving oil companies billions in taxpayer subsidies. Most Americans have a different definition of courage. They think courage is taking on oil companies, corporate special interests and billionaire polluters. But that's not in the GOP playbook. And so we know where Paul Ryan stands: He wants to abolish Medicare. And...

Just over a year ago, President Barack Obama singled out Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan as a serious-minded Republican who could be a partner in the kind of “adult conversation” the president said he welcomes on entitlement reform. But when Ryan stepped forward Tuesday with his long-awaited budget plan, an ambitious attempt to slice almost $6 trillion in federal spending and fundamentally alter Medicare and Medicaid, the White House rejected it. Obama brushed off a question about the plan at a brief news conference. And press secretary Jay Carney described it as flawed in approach.